The Best Birthday Present
by JilyEvotter19
Summary: It's midnight and Lily has just turned fifteen. What happens when an owl comes tapping at her window, bearing a letter and a present?


**Author's Note:** I took the name Brumbee from _The Magic Thief_.

* * *

The September night was calm and silvery. Outside, the moonlight rippled and danced in the shadows, creating a stunning effect. The world, merged in a mixture of radiance and darkness, looked breath-taking and beautiful and eerie at the same time. Everything was bathed in an ethereal glow.

It was nearing midnight and Lily Luna Potter was propped up in her bed, reading a book by candlelight. Her dorm-mates were all sleeping. A while passed and she twisted her neck and gazed out of the window directly behind her. She admired the elegance of the night outside. _Just perfect for my birthday,_ she thought. It was, in fact, the twenty-seventh today. Twelve minutes now and the twenty-eighth would arrive, bringing with it Lily's fifteenth birthday.

Lily sighed and turned towards her book once more. It was bound with a gold cover. Words written on the front in a rich red colour read _So You Want To Impress Him?_ Lily wasn't reading the book for pleasure. She rarely read books. Well, she did pore over school textbooks but those were important. She didn't have time for novels, anyway. She always had other things on her mind, things that occupied her time so much that she forgot about the existence of stories entirely: Quidditch, her friends, pranks ... not to mention a certain dark-haired, grey-eyed boy by the name of Lorcan Scamander. He _rarely_ left her mind.

Lily even preferred studying to reading for pleasure. Even though she wasn't a brilliant student like her cousin Rose, she did manage to achieve pretty good grades most of the time. Better than some of her classmates, at any rate.

Lily was, in fact, using the book she currently had her nose in as a _guide_.

People who didn't know the redhead very well would gasp at that statement. They would be more than a little surprised to find that Lily Potter, Quidditch star and witch extraordinaire, was consulting a book for help on something. Never mind what that something was. She was consulting a _book,_ of all things!

Now, people should not be blamed for thinking that. After all, even strangers admired the fact that Lily had almost everything in life that a normal girl would kill for: alluring looks and attractive features, a famous Quidditch player for a mother, the savior of the wizarding and Muggle world alike for a father, good grades, a certain gift that made her popular without trying, plenty of friends, a large fan club, an enormous family which included her fun-loving aunts and uncles (well, Aunt Fleur was not exactly _fun-loving_, but she was a good sort), a whole horde of cousins, two brothers who - despite their annoying ways - were fond of her, two lovely grandparents and a spectacular god-brother, Teddy.

So why, a casual observer would ask, was Lily seeking advice from a _book_? What, a perplexed stranger would ask, was so complicated that it forced Lily to do what she was doing right now?

The answer, of course, was simple. Lily Luna Potter was worried over a _boy_.

* * *

Lily closed her book with a light snap and placed it on a small table beside her four-poster bed. She glanced at her watch. It was exactly twelve o' clock. Midnight.

"Happy birthday, Lily," she sang to herself quietly.

Then, without warning, a slight tapping noise sounded outside the window. Lily jumped a bit in her bed. "Calm down, you complete idiot," she whispered to herself. "It's probably just an owl. Though who on earth would be sending an owl at this time of night?"

Nevertheless, she got up and went to the window. She had been right. There was an owl tapping impatiently on the window with its beak. A large owl, mostly white in colour, with several spots of grey here and there.

_Wait a minute. __Isn't this _Lorcan's_ owl?_

There was an envelope tied to the owl's leg, along with a lumpy package. After a few moments of difficulty, Lily managed to get the envelope off. Only one word was written on the front of the envelope. Her name.

She opened the envelope carefully. Out slid a letter, written in a familiar, scrawly script.

_Dear Lily,_

_Happy birthday!_

_Many happy returns of the day. (Well, technically, the day hasn't even arrived yet, but, you know, I feel traditionally obligated to say it, so ...) Hope I didn't disturb you a lot, I just wanted Brumbee to arrive at twelve on the dot. Thought it'd give you a surprise._

_I hope you like my present. Sorry it's very badly wrapped, I was never good at that sort of stuff. It's you who always manages to wrap gifts well. Lysander says hi and wishes you a happy birthday. (He's awake, too. He says the Nargles that live in our dormitory love midnight, and he stayed awake just to watch them. I guess he's inherited Mum's thinking. I clearly haven't. I told my idiot of a twin to go back to sleep because there's no such thing as Nargles, but he wouldn't listen.)_

_Now that you're obviously awake, I'll just say goodnight! _

_Love,_

_Lorcan_

By the time she had finished reading the letter, Lily had a dreamy look on her face. The thing was, she had fancied Lorcan since a year, and had been devising numerous ways to get together with him, but at the last moment her Gryffindor courage would fail and she would abandon her expedient.

It had filled her with a strange sort of warm glow inside that Lorcan had gone to the effort of sending her a letter and a present exactly the moment she turned fifteen.

Oh, she felt so grown-up. She had turned fifteen only one or two minutes ago, and already a boy was sending her birthday presents and letters in the middle of the night. Although she knew Lorcan had most probably intended it as _friends_, she couldn't help fantasizing ...

_OK, stop it, Lily. Just - stop - it. Open your present and send Lorcan a reply, for the love of Merlin. _

She picked up the package and gently pulled apart the wrapping paper. She always loved carefully storing away the wrapping paper. Once the wrapping paper was off, a beautiful necklace was revealed.

"Wow," Lily breathed as she looped her fingers through the chain and held up the necklace in front of her. It was silhouetted against the velvety night sky outside, glimmering and shimmering as if a thousand little beads of glitter were sparkling on it. Small sparkling diamonds were embedded on the chain. The necklace was neither very, very outrageously beautiful and nor was it very plain. It was just _perfect_.

Lily fished out some parchment from a drawer in her bedside table and hastily wrote a reply, aware of the antsy clicks Brumbee the owl was giving with her beak, displaying her impatience.

_Dear Lorcan,_

_Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for the necklace! It's so pretty! I love it._

_Your letter and present gave me quite a surprise. Who knew you could be so thoughtful? Ah, you know I'm just kidding._

_Haha, yeah, it was not-so-professionally wrapped but it made me laugh, so it doesn't matter. Say hi back to Lysander for me, if he's still 'watching' the Nargles. Poor bloke, losing his sleep just to watch some imaginary creatures._

_Goodnight!_

_Love,_

_Lily_

She slid the letter into an envelope, wrote _Lorcan_ on the front and tied it to the owl's leg. She took flight more than happily and as Lily watched, Brumbee flew in the direction of one of the windows of the Gryffindor fourth-year boys' dormitory.

Lily went back to bed with a yawn. She better sleep, or she wouldn't wake up in the morning. She would have felt ecstatic if only she had known that a certain dark-haired lad had tucked away her letter in his pyjama pocket and gone to sleep. Lily was unknowing to the level of preciousness her letter held for Lorcan.

Boys would be boys.

* * *

Meanwhile, in the Gryffindor fourth-year boys' dormitory, Lorcan was lying on his bed with Lily's letter tucked up in his pocket. If he was not mistaken, Lily's letter contained several shallow hints of something more than friendship ... But then again, Lorcan might just be imagining it. After all, why would an amazing girl like Lily ever _fancy_ a boy like him? He was lucky that she liked him as friends, at least. And yet ... Lorcan couldn't help noticing ...

"Oh, just shut up," he told himself. "Stop imagining that Lily fancies you."

But it wasn't his fault for imagining that. After all, girls could be so confusing sometimes.


End file.
